Club Property: Adults Only Motorcycle Club Romance: Roadrunners MC

by Black, Selena

  “He will come back,” she said and turned to her father. “So you should just go because I’m not leaving.”

  Samuel remembered the words of Bella that if he came down too heavy handed he would just push Carrie into the arms of Carl. He decided to heed the warning, but wasn’t about to walk out of the door and abandon his daughter after traveling so far.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said.

  “Suit yourself,” Carrie replied and turned her attention out of the window once more.

  She was certain that Crash would return that day and it was just a question of waiting, so that’s what she set her mind to do.

  Chapter 10

  “Are you being fucking serious?” Patch let out in an incredulous voice.

  “What did you expect?” Six replied. “After the job went to pieces so badly, we were hardly going to drive home after only a couple of days.”

  “I get that,” Patch said. “But I didn’t anticipate a forced layoff that would last quite so long.”

  “Well you better get used to the idea because we won’t be traveling to San Francisco anytime soon,” Six went on. “Things are still way too hot and the three of us showing our faces would just enflame the situation. Supposedly the Disciples are screaming blue murder that we stiffed them and didn’t supply their weapons as promised. The Mob was already on the warpath about us muscling in on their weapons and drugs trade. The fact that their planned ambush of us ended with two of their men being taken out has just upped the ante and made them a much more dangerous enemy. The word is they are gunning for the Roadrunners that killed their men, so we need to keep a low profile until things blow over.”

  “That could be a long time considering just how fucked up things got yesterday,” Crash pointed out.

  “We’re probably talking in terms of weeks, but there’s no way of knowing how many, so get used to being away from home,” Six replied. “I was told to keep in touch to get the word of when things are safe enough for us to make a move. We can only start thinking about a return when that happens.”

  “Shit,” Patch spat out in a frustrated voice. “This isn’t even our fault. All we did was react to a bad situation that wasn’t of our making. Is there any news on how the Mob found out about our transport job?”

  Six shook his head.

  “The Disciples are adamant it didn’t come from them,” he said. “Unless either of you want to confess something to me, I can’t see that the information was leaked from the Roadrunners.”

  “Great,” Patch exclaimed and threw up his arms. “So nobody knows anything and we have to stay hidden in this shithole for weeks on end.”

  Crash looked around the kitchen they were sitting in. It was well laid out and neat, as was the rest of the property from what he’d seen of it.

  “I’ve been in worse,” he commented. “As safe houses go, this is one of the better places I’ve been holed up in.”

  “We’ll go fucking stir crazy being stuck in here for weeks, with no real prospect of going home,” Patch complained. “What the hell are we supposed to do?”

  “You could always go to San Francisco and take on the Mob,” Crash pointed out. “I’m sure they would be happy to see you.”

  Patch let out an exasperated sigh as he put his hands over his eyes.

  “I told you a fucking new job was a bad idea,” he went on. “Didn’t I say that?”

  “Yeah, well we can’t change things now,” Six replied. “What’s done is done, so quit your complaining. We’ll just have to make the best of things for the moment. Only the boss knows where we are, so I’m assuming there’s no way we can be tracked. It’s just a case of getting through the next few weeks and hopefully the heat will pass.”

  “What about the job?” Patch asked. “Are the Disciples still expecting us to see through the deal?”

  “There’s no point in worrying about that,” Six said. “It’s on the back burner and might come into play depending on what happens in the next few weeks. Our instructions are to keep our heads down and not bring any attention to ourselves.”

  The three of them went silent in contemplation of the situation they now found themselves in. It was Crash that finally broke it as he got to his feet.

  “Anyone want a beer?”

  The other two nodded their heads, so he got three bottles from the fridge and handed them out. He wasn’t really in the mood to listen to any more of Patch’s grumbling about new jobs and being stuck in a shithole, so he decided to go and lie down.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said and walked out of the kitchen.

  Climbing the stairs to the first floor of the property, he walked along to the bedroom he was using and went inside. He closed the door and propped his head up on a few pillows when he got on the bed. It allowed him to drink his beer while his mind ticked over.

  Their flight to get across the border the previous day lasted longer than they expected, with the state of the truck not helping matters and making it difficult to travel at speed. Not that they really could on the narrow, bumpy roads they were using. They eventually crossed into Oregon, but it wasn’t as if they could relax, and they’d remained on the smallest of back roads to give them the best chance of avoiding detection. That meant it took around four hours to get to the safe house and they placed the truck out of sight in the garage then unloaded the weapons to stash them in the crawl space under the property.

  They’d switched on the television immediately after they finished the work to find that the story of the explosion and gunfight was being reported. There was no mention of the Roadrunners being involved in it, and the speculation of those saying anything was that the encounter was infighting between different factions of the Mob. That was good news for them, although they were a long way from being in the clear.

  It was only later that night when Crash was in the quiet of the bedroom that his mind turned to what he left behind in his apartment. The compulsion to phone Carrie came over him and he gave into it in the early hours of the morning. The call rang out and wasn’t answered, which meant she was asleep and didn’t hear the ringing or she’d taken his advice and left. He suspected it was more than likely the former of those, but passed on calling again.

  That was partly because he decided to keep himself busy and he’d gathered what tools he could find in the house and garage the following morning then set about repairing the truck. It gave him something to concentrate on, so he didn’t have to think about the situation he was in. He started by fixing the alignment of the rear wheels and spent until the early afternoon completing that. The damaged bodywork was a more difficult job to get done right, but he worked for the rest of the day on hammering the metal into some semblance of its previous shape. It was still obvious the truck had been involved in a collision, but the vehicle was at least in decent condition to drive should they need it.

  He’d gone inside to the discussion about how long they likely needed to be in hiding and now that he was lying in the quiet of the bedroom, he was unable to stop his thoughts returning to Carrie. That annoyed him to an extent, since she only came in his life a few days before after four years of not really thinking about her. She shouldn’t be in his thoughts at all… but she was. He got his phone out and considered calling the apartment, but eventually couldn’t bring himself to do it. A twenty-year-old college girl coming into his world was something he never envisaged and he couldn’t really get his head around the idea of her being a permanent fixture in his life.

  He guessed that she would still be at his apartment awaiting his return, but that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, and he looked at the screen of his phone once more and wondered if he should tell her what happened. Again he decided not to and slowly came to the conclusion that it would be for the best if he just ignored her in the hope she went away. It wasn’t like they were an item or he was breaking her heart. She would more than likely just make up her mind that he was a lying bastard for telling her he would return and ev
entually leave.

  “Is that so bad?” he said under his breath then brought the bottle he was holding to his lips to take a drink of beer.

  He couldn’t make up his mind if it was a bad thing or not. The sex they shared was certainly some of the best he’d ever experienced, and he would be more than happy to have that in his life. He suspected that Carrie would too if her enjoyment of the intimacy they shared for a night was anything to go by. On the other hand, she was a twenty-year-old girl and thirteen years his junior. It was difficult for him to think of her as anything other than the cheeky young teen that liked to tease him, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get past that.

  He could remember doing his best to avoid her at the army base. That was mainly because of her young age, but also for fear of getting in trouble with his commanding officer, and there was still an element of that in his mind. Staff Sergeant Samuel Nelson would definitely not be happy with his precious daughter taking up with a thirty-three year old ex-army biker, and he wasn’t sure he wanted the hassle of that in his life.

  “Just let her leave and forget about her,” he told himself.

  Every way he looked at the situation, it seemed the sensible course of action for him. However, it also worked on the assumption that Carrie would just walk away. He’d got an insight over the last few days of what a determined girl she could be when she wanted something, although he knew that already from his time on the army base a few years previously.

  “Fuck,” he hissed through clenched teeth as he struggled with his thoughts.

  It felt like his life was going to shit, and he really didn’t know what to do. He dropped his phone on the floor and tried to just relax and enjoy his beer. The reality of the situation was that he was stuck where he was for the next few weeks anyway, and there was no doubt that Carrie would be gone by the time things cooled down enough for him, Patch and Six to make their way to San Francisco.

  For the moment he decided the best thing he could do when it came to her was nothing at all, and he finished his beer then closed his eyes to get some rest.

  Chapter 11

  “We can’t stay here indefinitely.”

  Carrie stared down at the kitchen table and refused to meet her father’s gaze when he spoke. She wanted to disagree with him, but in reality she knew what he was saying was true. The apartment wasn’t their home and they really had no right to be there. There also seemed little point in staying. It was now a couple of days since Crash should have returned from his working trip, but there was still no sign of him.

  There was no way on knowing if that was unplanned or a deliberate move on his part to avoid her. Carrie was desperate to know the truth, although there was no way she could get in touch with him to find out. In the day and a half they spent together they didn’t exchange phone numbers and for all she knew, he might never come back while she was there. She cursed herself silently for not thinking about getting his number before he left, but it was too late for that now.

  “You need to face up to it, Carrie,” her father insisted to break into her thoughts. “He lied to you.”

  “I don’t believe that,” she replied in a flash as she finally lifted her gaze to his.

  That her father agreed to stay in the apartment for as long as he did was something of a surprise, but she knew her time there was coming to an end. She’d found herself hoping with increasing desperation over the past few days that she would hear the sound of a key in the front door lock, but it didn’t happen and she couldn’t contain the growing sense of despair.

  “Then where is he?” her father pressed.

  It wasn’t the first occasion she’d heard him say those words since he arrived and it became too much for her.

  “I don’t know,” she let out in a raised voice and the chair she was sitting on almost toppled over as she launched herself to her feet.

  The strain of waiting with no resolution finally told on her and the tears pricked at the corner of her eyes. She didn’t want her father to see her crying and turned away from him, but there was no stopping the sudden outpouring of emotions overwhelming her. In seconds wet trails were streaming down her cheeks and her shoulders heaved as she was unable to contain the sobs. Her father got up to come around the table, but she pushed him away at first.

  “You don’t care,” she accused him.

  “That’s not true,” he replied and wrapped his arms tightly around her. “I care about you.”

  She struggled to get away from him, but finally relented and put her head on his chest as she tried to get control of herself. It took a few minutes for the tears to dry up, but she kept her face pressed on her father’s body even when she stopped crying.

  “Why didn’t he come home?” she asked in a quiet voice. “I believed him when he said he would.”

  “I don’t know,” Samuel replied. “Maybe you just have to accept that he doesn’t feel the same way as you.”

  “He does,” Carrie insisted. “I know he does.”

  “Maybe you just think he does,” Samuel went on. “Sometimes the strength of your own feelings blinds you to what others are really thinking.”

  She finally pushed herself away from him and accepted the handkerchief he got from his pocket to hold out to her.

  “I just wish I knew why he didn’t return,” she lamented.

  “Whatever the reason, he isn’t here,” Samuel replied. “And there’s no point in just sitting here hoping he’ll turn up. For all you know, this could be just another Roadrunners’ safe house used by any member of the gang. You have no guarantee that Carl will return here.”

  “This place is in his name,” she pointed out. “It’s how I found him.”

  “OK, so maybe it is his apartment,” Samuel conceded. “It doesn’t mean he spends all his time here, and we’ve no idea when he’ll show his face or even if he will at all.”

  “I know,” Carrie replied in a loud voice that softened as she repeated her words. “I know.”

  “Then let’s go home.”

  She let out a sigh as she considered her options. There really was no point in sitting waiting at the apartment. It was already driving her crazy after a couple of days and resulted in the outburst of tears she just suffered. The frustration of him not arriving would only get worse as things dragged on. She didn’t really want to go home either, and that only left her with one other sensible thing she could do.

  “I’m going back to college,” she finally let out.

  “You’re sure you want to do that?” her father asked.

  Carrie nodded her head. If she went home she would be under the scrutiny of her parents and could do without that. As much as she wanted to curse Crash for not coming home, she wasn’t quite ready to give up on him yet, and she wanted to know what happened to make him stay away. It would be more difficult to do at home under the observation of her mother and father, and she would have more opportunity at the college. Returning to her studies would also give her something to focus her mind on other than the situation she found herself in.

  “Yes,” she replied. “I’m going to the college.”

  “Then get your belongings,” her father told her.

  She nodded her head and walked to the bedroom to pack her possessions in her bag. When she returned to the lounge, she saw the room was empty and it gave her the opportunity to go over to the phone. She brought out the piece of paper and pen from her pocket and wrote down the number. The sound of her father returning made her quickly hide away what she was holding and she turned to face him as he came in the room.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  She nodded and looked around the place one last time before following him to the front door. Leaving so soon after arriving wasn’t what she expected, but she hoped that it wasn’t the end of things. The pair of them walked down the stairs to the front of the building and saw that the street was quiet. It meant they started to walk, and it was five minutes or so before they eventually managed to hail a cab. They were
silent on the way to the bus station and Samuel paid the fare when they arrived. The place was busy when they walked inside and they looked around for the ticket counter then made their way across to it.

  “Do you have enough money?” Samuel asked as they waited in line.

  “I’m fine just now,” Carrie replied.

  Samuel bought the ticket when they got to the counter and handed it over to his daughter with one hundred dollars.

  “I said I was fine,” Carrie insisted.

  “Just take it,” he replied.

  She knew there was no point in arguing with him and accepted the money and ticket. They walked across to the correct stand and were silent as they waited for the bus to arrive. It was Samuel that spoke when it did.